Monday, June 05, 2006

The Perils of Gmail

Yesterday, I received a handful of sweet e-mails from friends and acquaintances regarding my brother's death. I appreciated each and every one. The thoughts and words were so sincere and moving.

There was just a teeeeeny tiny problem with one of the kind missives.

The writer of this particular message had made a wee mistake: instead of a space between two words, our correspondent had put a period. As fate would have it, the second word just happens to be an active Internet domain. So, what did Gmail do to these two words? Why, it assumed that they were actually two elements of a website URL, and Gmail made a hotlink! Being the curious sort (and initially not getting that this was simply a mistake), I clicked on the link.

Oh my.

Unwittingly, my kind correspondent and Gmail had conspired to send me to someone's homegrown porn literature site. Not only that, it was a direct link to a story about animals, S&M, and, god help me, full body laser hair removal. (Yeah, I read a couple of pages of it before getting completely freaked out.)

After finally picking my jaw back up off the floor, all I could do was laugh. I'm sure my sympathetic friend would be mortified to know he'd accidentally sent me on one girl's journey into caning, hairlessness, and massively deviant sexual behavior.

I asked one of my sisters if I should tell him. Horrified, she said, "Oh dear god, no."

3 comments:

Did your brother Ed have a wicked sense of humor? Perhaps he was channeling through your dear friend and reminding you that he's keeping things real!

Seriously, though, that is hilarious. I wouldn't tell the friend now, but maybe down the road, you could have a good laugh with him over it and tell him how he and Gmail's unintentional mistake provided you with a moment of levity (and horror) during a time of sadness.